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2017 CERAN® Design Awards: Award Winners Revealed

Futuristic cooking table announced as winning concept of the first ever international CERAN® Design Awards claiming first place and the € 5,000 prize.

First Place: Vesta 4.0, by Max Neustadt

World-renowned glass-ceramic manufacturer SCHOTT have announced the winners of the 2017 CERAN® Design Awards, in cooperation with designboom. With the model of a ‘traditional kitchen’ now becoming an increasingly outdated concept, entrants to the CERAN® Design Awards were tasked with finding new ways of employing the benefits of glass-ceramic, creating products that focus on Functionality, Urbanism, Sustainability, Illumination, Connectivity and Social Experience – abbreviated to 'FUSICS'.

Contestants were judged on innovation, functionality, practical value, creativity and the quality of their design, ultimately reinterpreting the cooking surface and the space around it.

With hundreds of entries from across Europe and the wider world, SCHOTT CERAN® and designboom were helped in the judging process by an esteemed panel of international experts from across the world, including Sebastian Conran, Industrial Designer, Helen Powell, Design Writer (Design Hunter blog)and Robert Cristinetti, Designer and Entrepreneur, amongst others.

Björn Weller, Director of Marketing at SCHOTT CERAN® says: “We were blown away by the quality of designs we received for this year’s CERAN® Design Awards. Participants successfully challenged our notions of what the kitchen of the future might look like and demonstrated to us that there was, as expected, still a great deal of potential for glass-ceramic in our homes.”

VESTA 4.0 (1st place)By Max Neustadt, Germany

VESTA 4.0 is a smart kitchen concept, taking its name from the Roman goddess of hearth, home and family. Blending smart technology with eye-catching contemporary design, VESTA 4.0 reimagines the very notion of the kitchen as a room apart, blurring the boundaries between separate cooking and living spaces.

Vesta effectively deconstructs the notion of a traditional kitchen - distributing heating, food preparation, lighting, air quality etc into smaller, more flexible units that work with the rest of your home. What sets VESTA 4.0 apart from other entrants is its use of ‘smart’ home technology – set to revolutionise the way we live in years to come.

The Cooking Table II is a multi-purpose dining table based on the idea of magnetic power transmission. Harking back to traditional notions of food preparation, the kitchen table once again becomes the primary location for social interaction and cements the place of the kitchen as the very heart of the home.

Blending the boundaries between resting, socializing, working and dining, the table also serves as a cooking station. Portable induction hobs with SCHOTT CERAN® glass-ceramic cooktop panels can be clicked onto a magnetic track, embedded in the surface. The stove is a flexible cooking tool that can be adapted to the individual needs of each household, where individual hobs can be moved around as well as having the ability to be stored in drawers underneath the solid wooden surface.

Balancing the aesthetic with the technical, each cooking zone has an integrated magnetic coil as well as inductive energy transfer.

Leveled Induction Cooktop (3rd place)By Jaewan Choi, South Korea

Jaewan’s entry is an example of how sometimes the simplest ideas can be some of the best. The Leveled Induction Cooktop solves the problem of lack of space on a cooktop by finding the hidden space between pans.

Rearranging heating spots more efficiently and adopting different levels to each means that cooking on multiple hobs is no longer an issue – especially if using larger pans. Increasing the convenience of a conduction hob, which is easier and safer to use than on gas, is an important next step for the Korean market, and something the Leveled Induction Cooktop has captured perfectly.

Wall-Kitchen (SCHOTT Special Award)By Jun Li, USA

Using space-saving technology, the Wall-Kitchen by Jun Li is a truly dynamic design that allows an almost entire kitchen to fold away by itself.

Utilising SCHOTT CERAN®’s expertise in glass-ceramic, the Wall-Kitchen panel transforms into digital canvas when ‘hibernating’ - projecting an intricate ‘water screen’. Then, using voice recognition, it can be turned into a comprehensive cooking zone, with storage, food preparation, cooking station and cooking ‘helper’ all available to the user. Intelligent interface technology is embedded under all glass-ceramic panels.When cooking is completed, the Wall-Kitchen goes back to hibernating status, activating the water screen for self-cleaning and cooling down. The system turns back into a quiet, aesthetically pleasing wall within the home.

Dr. Joern Besinger, Product Innovation Manager at SCHOTT CERAN®, praised Jun Li’s radical approach: “The Wall-Kitchen successfully highlights how rooms within the home are now more flexible spaces – and how we’re casting off the rigid, traditional definitions of kitchen, dining and living room. It also successfully demonstrates how glass-ceramic can act as an enabler for different surfaces and therefore purposes, allowing multifunctionality to enter the very fabric of the home.”

SCHOTT CERAN® issued €11,000 worth of prize funds in total to the winning participants, as well as providing the opportunity to join the brand at the London Design Fair in September 2017, where the top designs will be exhibited.

SCHOTT CERAN® will also be revealing the Top 30 concepts at the show, where members of the public can vote for their favourite design in a ‘People’s Choice Award’ – with the winner being announced on Sunday 24th September on the brand’s Facebook page.

SCHOTT CERAN® will be exhibiting at the London Design Fair from September 21-24 2017 at Stand 8, Hall SBL

London Design Fair 2017 will be held at Old Truman Brewery, 26 Hanbury Street, London, E1 6QR, UK

The 2017 CERAN® Design Award is in association with designboom. Participation was open to professionals, students, and design-enthusiasts from across the globe. The entries were judged by a range of design luminaries including Sebastian Conran, Gweanel Nicolas, Robert Cristinetti, Andrea Maffei, Helen Powell, Johannes Riffelmacher, Thomas Kosikowski, William Sawaya, Paolo Moroni, Inga Sempe, Jeff Shi and Michael Young